


The Cracks in Our Foundation

by i_claudia



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Dom/sub Undertones, Experimental, M/M, Past & Implied Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-15
Updated: 2011-02-15
Packaged: 2017-11-10 17:47:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/468998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/i_claudia/pseuds/i_claudia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John knows he can leave whenever the excitement crosses over into overwhelming, whenever Sherlock finally breaks the bounds of their fragile trust in ways John can never forgive, and the fact that it hasn’t happened yet, that he doesn’t quite feel comfortable thinking about leaving yet -- that doesn’t mean he never will.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Cracks in Our Foundation

**Author's Note:**

> I was watching the first episode for the first time and went: wait, wait, hold up here, John has trust issues and Sherlock is a high-functioning sociopath? There’s _loads_ to unpack there. Then I read _Dancer_ by Colum McCann, fell in love, and decided to experiment. I’m still not sure it ended up the way I wanted it to, but I’m sick of fiddling around with it.
> 
> Originally posted on LJ [here](http://i-claudia.livejournal.com/67965.html). (15 February 2011)
> 
>  
> 
> _My fingertips are holding onto  
>  The cracks in our foundation  
> And I know that I should let go  
> But I can’t_  
> (“Foundations”, Kate Nash)

*

I want from you. 

Not you, I want more than you. I want _from_ you, things you’ll never give, things I have no words to ask for. I want you to wine me, dine me properly. I want you to speak freely, loose the tension in your shoulders and talk to me.

I want you to tell me everything you think about me, enumerate my flaws one by one until they’re laid out, vicious, for you to pick over, analyze. I want you to use me, experiment with the pieces of my mind you’ve taken, put me in a petri dish until I moulder, until you add an acid to dissolve my very bones. I want you to discover gold running through my minefields. I want you to extract the best of me, refine it, melt and meld it until you look at me and say _This. This is good_.

I want you to look at me; I don’t know that you can. Maybe you’re only doing what you’re capable of; the untouchable greatness of your temple still and forever untouched by any man.

I’m waiting at your gates.

*

32.7 degrees precisely. Effects liquid nitrogen. L: 5, 10, 100 metres. Milk. _Set keel to breakers, forth on the godly sea_ bodies heavy with weeping is the sister’s copy a first edition? 

Ginger. Patches. MILK. 

Almonds. Blackbird. 

Fifth stone from left. Up three. Neighbor magazines.   
Well empty cousin involved.

Now voyager! John: Eggs. Marmalade. Sail thou forth to seek and find.

Fake stamp. Red. Leptospermum petersonil. Aluminum starch octenylsuccinate. Twice velocity?

*

He’s grown used to Sherlock’s notes, the scraps of paper he finds scribbled over and scattered like grain for the pigeons on the four winds. It had seemed strange at first, out of place, because Sherlock has always and ever been so completely contained inside his own head, but it fits, somehow, all these inexplicable messages like mirrors offering a tiny glimpse into Sherlock’s mind. Sometimes he can figure out the meaning of them; more often he can’t begin to fathom them. Sometimes he can’t be bothered: bins them or tells Sherlock that perhaps it’s time _he_ did the bloody shopping for once in his life.

Sherlock gives him a quizzical look, almost hurt, and John sighs and buys the milk anyway. He does that often with Sherlock, and it should startle him, that he makes so much room for this man who seems to make no room for John in return. In the end, John knows better than to look at the appearances. Sherlock _has_ made room for John, though it isn’t in any of the ways John was expecting.

He’s not an idiot, at least not compared with the rest of the world. He sees the looks the two of them get when they go out. There are the Mrs Hudsons of the world, who pretend not to peer at them, torn somewhere between fondness and titillated interest. There are the waiters and cabbies and sales workers who never fail to err on the side of over-caution when remembering their lessons in political correctness and non-discrimination—John’s long since given up on correcting them, since most of the time they ignore him. There are the Andersons, the Sergeant Donovans: the people who only see a man who doesn’t fit their concept of _acceptable_ and the man who inexplicably follows him, trapped as a fly in a web.

John rather resents that impression, actually: the idea that he mindlessly follows Sherlock, helpless to leave. He could pack up and leave any time he wanted, leave Sherlock Holmes alone to his flat and experiments and cases. The fact that he hasn’t yet doesn’t mean he can’t. He’s almost left twice this week alone, actually: once when he’d found a human hand crawling with maggots in with his boxers, and once when Sherlock had melted John’s watch while John was working. Sherlock had brushed the damage off on both occasions, moving smoothly onto his next escapade into deeper madness over John’s fury and protests, leaving John with a pale stripe of skin where his watch used to be and another bin full of clothes Sherlock has somehow ruined.

He’d almost left, had thought Sherlock _deserved_ to be left for pulling two stunts like that in as many days, but he’d never packed up his things: it had seemed too much trouble, too much work, when really life with Sherlock isn’t terrible all the time. He thinks about Mycroft’s words from that first meeting, thinks about Lestrade and Donovan, and he thinks maybe they each have a part of it right, but none of them have the whole picture. John knows he doesn’t either, knows no one will ever see to the depth of Sherlock Holmes’s mind, but he thinks he sees more than most. It feels like a privilege, adds a little to the thrill he can’t help but feel when Sherlock finishes pacing and tears out of the flat to hail a cab, sure that John will follow. 

John knows he can leave whenever the excitement crosses over into overwhelming, whenever Sherlock finally breaks the bounds of their fragile trust in ways John can never forgive, and the fact that it hasn’t happened yet, that he doesn’t quite feel comfortable thinking about leaving yet—that doesn’t mean he never will.

*

Lestrade met Sherlock while cuffing him, a tall man too thin from habitual use, his pupils tiny and his expression blank from whatever he’d been pumping into his system, though his gaze was even. Lestrade had seen a hundred like him on the streets before, or so he thought until Sherlock turned and said

_Let me go and I’ll find the man who killed your wife._

Lestrade nearly hit him for that, nearly shoved him into the back of the police car where he bloody well belonged, but something in the man’s expression caught at him, some ragged honesty tugging at the hope Lestrade had thought he’d left behind years ago.

_Don’t start with me_ , he wanted to say, and didn’t, just warned him about his rights, shoved him harder against the door of the car. The flashing lights made the man look hollowed out, paler than he probably is. What the hell could this man know about Lestrade’s life, about the day that life burnt down? He’d probably read the papers and thought it’d be enough to make him an expert.

He made the mistake of asking the man where he got off sticking his nose into things he knows nothing about.

A week later a fat brown envelope appeared, waiting, on his desk. No one ever figured out who put it there, but after he’d had it checked and declared clean he opened it, found the case solved.

 

He hadn’t attended the trial, spent the night after the sentencing with the bottle of Glenfidditch from her father they’d been saving for something special, because he’d always thought life would start again but every day he’s slowly learning it never will, not the way he wants.

The next morning, he picked up his mobile and dialed the number of one Sherlock Holmes.

Clean yourself up, he said, and I might have a job for you.

 

Five years later and here they are still, Lestrade calling on Holmes whenever there’s a crime (or, more often, a string of them,) weird enough or frustrating enough to catch Sherlock’s interest. He still has to cuff Sherlock on occasion, usually because Sherlock thinks he can do the law’s work for it, and Sherlock is still an addict, though it’s been years since Lestrade caught him red-handed and high. Sherlock has found other things to be addicted to: the pounding adrenaline of the chase, the rush he gets when he outthinks another criminal calling themselves a genius. 

Lestrade has watched him carefully through the years, and whatever the rest of the Yard might think, Sherlock’s much saner than any of them give him credit for. He’s crafty, clever enough to let them think what they want, and in the end they unwittingly give him access to all sorts of information they’re trying to keep hidden. He hasn’t the first clue about how people work, but he knows exactly how to play them give him what he wants, knows precisely which role to slip into for maximum success. Lestrade doesn’t think Sherlock will turn to outright crime, real crime—never mind whatever smaller offenses he might rack up in the pursuit of one trail or another—not as long as he has something to keep him interested. Sherlock’s the type to enjoy unraveling the Gordian knots other people leave, calculating exactly where to slice to let the whole thing come slithering apart. 

There is no doubt in Lestrade’s mind that Sherlock would be a mastermind if he ever did focus his attention on committing felonies instead of solving them, but he’s almost sure that Sherlock will never turn to that—almost.

He used to believe that going to Sherlock with unsolvable crimes would be enough to keep Sherlock interested, would keep him away from a deeper spiral into the cobwebs of mad genius, and it was—at least, as far as Lestrade knows. But now, watching Sherlock and Dr Watson confer, (if he can call it conferring; it’s much more Sherlock talking impatiently at Watson and Watson asking interrupted questions,) he wonders if Sherlock needed something more, whether he’s found it here, in another person to indulge his madness. Lestrade and Sherlock have always tolerated each other, for the most part; their relationship is based on mutual needs, on the realism of coinciding interests. Now, Lestrade wonders if Sherlock was missing something he hadn’t even noticed himself, as brilliant as he is: someone to travel deeper with him, to constantly consider him an equal—even a friend—no matter what Sherlock does or thinks himself.

It’s something to wonder about, at least.

*

They go to him because he finds them; they would not otherwise seek him out. They respect him, for what he does and has done for them, but they do not love him, will not welcome him. He does not belong to them, with them, though he passes between them as easily as a ghost sometimes.

They have stolen for him because he has stolen for them: information, evidence, equipment, clothing, identities. Were he to kill for them, they would kill for him as well. It is a partnership. He looks at them and sees—not equals, never, no one is ever equal in his eyes, he belongs to a plane towering far over mortal heads, dominating his own landscape to the exclusion of all else—not equals, then, but lesser men on equal footing with all other lesser men he encounters, women equally pale and uninteresting to the women who, quick and silken-thoughted, think themselves better.

He is an addict. They know this. He has bought from them. They have supplied him with cigarettes, with alcohol, with opium and cocaine and, when nothing else was enough, with their own stories, their own existences: for he finds that most addictive of all, the picking over of other lives, the lining up and inhaling of other memories and dreams and shattered pasts until—

It is impossible to tell where he will want them to go next, impossible to know who he will come to with new requests—not requests, not truly, but not quite demands, either; he walks the balance between demand and respect so well—and so they learn to keep their heads down and their eyes sharp, waiting, waiting, because they do not trust him but life is always less grey around him, a whirling cacophony of noise and suspicions and colour—all scarlets and blacks, his colours the colours of a battlefield, and he leaves flaring orange to linger behind him in their minds, already hungry for the next.

*

Quite honestly, you’ve been to Holmes’s website. You’ve seen the testimonials, you’ve worked alongside him, and you still can’t see what the big deal is. So the man’s a freak. So he’s solved more crimes this month than the entire department put together. It doesn’t mean you have to like him, doesn’t mean you have to make his job easy for him. It’s corrupt, the way Lestrade just lets Holmes in everywhere; for all anyone knows Holmes could be committing all these crimes and using Lestrade to make sure he’s covered all his tracks. That, or he’s just reveling in watching them all run around after the wrong suspects; you’re sure he’d enjoy doing that.

You see the seductiveness in it, of course. You yourself feel pulled sometimes toward Holmes, just like that poor sod always trailing after him, the doctor, whatever his name is, but you’ll never allow yourself to be another eager disciple, tongue hanging out to suck the cock of this psychopath. Sociopath. Same difference. There’s a moral high ground, here, and you’ll stick to it, warn everyone about the danger of trusting someone, anyone, like Holmes, until someday someone believes you. The day Sherlock Holmes is locked away for good... oh, that will be a sweet day of victory indeed.

The thing you hate most is that Holmes lives up to the hype too often. It isn’t natural to know so much about a crime—at least, as long as you weren’t the one who committed it, which is what Holmes always insists. It’s a wonder anyone still believes him.

One day, you’ll catch him out on something, catch him in the act, and you can’t _wait_ to rub it in all of the faces of those who told you there was no fire beneath all that smoke.

*

Harry meets Sherlock Holmes for the first time when she meets John in the little park she used to visit with Clara when they were in the city. John hadn’t wanted to come, but she’d been prepared for that—her brother has always been the worst sort of predictable—and in the end he’d had to agree. They’re sitting in the park, John’s face etched with creases from frowning, one hand firm on the cane she hates that he still uses because she knows it’s a prop, knows it’s only for something to focus his attention on, when she sees movement out of the corner of her eye and can’t resist looking curiously around.

There’s a man inspecting one of the flower plots near the front of the park, hands linked behind his back, wearing a long black coat that must be far too warm for the late spring sun, even if it is obscured behind low clouds. She nearly ignores him, writing him off as just another person out enjoying the park and the day, but then John makes an exasperated noise and says, loud enough for his voice to carry:

“Do you have nothing else to do with your time but trail me?”

“You know him?” Harry hisses at her brother while the other man turns and grins at them.

“My flatmate,” John tells her, not looking away from the man.

“It’s a public park,” John’s flatmate says, walking over. “I could be simply enjoying the day.”

John shakes his head. “You’re terrible at following people.”

“Tell that to the twelve dealers Lestrade arrested last night and the MacDougal killer.”

“Luck,” John replies, though he’s smiling. Harry looks between them as they talk, feeling more confused by the moment and cross with it, cross enough to scowl fiercely enough that the flatmate notices.

“Sherlock Holmes,” he introduces himself, holding out a hand which she takes after letting a moment lapse, just long enough for John to shift uncomfortably next to her.

“Pleased to meet you,” she says, though she isn’t. “John hasn’t spoken one word about you.”

She means it as an admonishment for John, but Sherlock only gives her a small, cool smile and says, “I’m not surprised, Harry.”

The nickname throws her off, though after a moment she supposes John could have reasonably told his flatmate who he was meeting. It’s enough to make her uncomfortable, though, with Sherlock’s eyes on her and John watching the two of them, looking amused.

Sherlock’s gaze snaps away at last, and she feels like she can breathe again, though it’s still unpleasant to be between the two of them. “There’s been another,” Sherlock announces, which doesn’t make sense, but John sighs as if he’s been expecting it.

“Garage?”

“Cupboard, this time. He’s changing.”

“Lestrade?”

“Desperate.” Sherlock gives a wide smile, and Harry revises her opinion of him again. There is no warmth in that smile: it promises violence. She feels a pinpricking of loathing working its way up her spine, concentrated on this man, this Sherlock Holmes, and the look he is giving her brother, the particular slant of the intent he focuses on John. “He’s giving us fifteen minutes.”

“Fifteen?” John’s moving, standing, and Harry wants to wrap a hand around his wrist, keep him there with her instead of going off with Holmes to whatever the man has planned. John’s already out of her reach, though, walking forward briskly without leaning on his cane at all. “It must be something really special. Where?”

“John—” Harry tries, but Sherlock talks over her.

“Camden. Taxi’s waiting at the entrance.”

John waves a curt goodbye to Harry, and she sits and watches him go, a little stunned, until Sherlock clears his throat quietly, and she looks back at him. “You’ve no claim on him,” she tells him, letting the anger come through to warn him away.

“Wrong,” he says thoughtfully, giving her another hard, uncomfortable look. “You’re the one with no claim, actually.”

He turns on his heel while he says it, throws the words over his shoulder with a certain careless finality, and after the taxi pulls away she stares at the hands clenched in her lap and wonders what on earth John’s found his way into, and whether she’ll ever see him rescued from it.

*

Things Sherlock Holmes has dropped, thrown, or mechanically catapulted out of the window of 221B Baker Street since John Watson moved in: for experiments, out of frustration or fits pique, or simply because he was bored and wanted to see which of John’s equally amusing reactions would manifest (though that’s simply another type of experiment, really, and Sherlock is self-aware enough to admit it):

two cartons of eggs: one egg by egg, the other whole, not even opened;

five plates his mother had given him on the occasion of his running away from home the fifth time;

seventeen half-melted pieces of a human femur bone (the left);

one shot-put;

an original Viking helmet on loan from the museum;

all of the feathers from John’s new down pillow;

seventy-four of the devices Mycroft systematically bugs the flat with, at an average of three a week;

three of the romance novels Mrs Hudson hides behind her sofa, accompanied by the unabridged Proust and a fifteen-year-old map of the Paris metro;

ten glass bottles of varying colours, the shattering of which caused no end of bellicosity from the pedestrians below;

and on one memorable occasion, the entire contents of John’s wardrobe, after which John yells at Sherlock for hours while he chases his socks down the street before refusing to speak to Sherlock for nearly a week. Sherlock uses the opportunity to dispose of some of John’s more offensive articles of clothing, and when John discovers his tie—he never wears it, Sherlock has never seen John wearing it—being used as the control in an experiment involving human eyeballs, formaldehyde, and the deep freezer at Bart’s, Sherlock thinks for a moment that John might genuinely act on his threats to move out. But John has nowhere to go, and he has wrapped himself willingly in Sherlock’s life, in Sherlock’s web, and as much as he tosses threats around, Sherlock knows he’ll never leave.

John is back the next morning after a night spent on Sarah’s sofa, with a new tie and a sore back, and Sherlock allows himself a small smile, just barely enough to crease the corners of his mouth.

*

It’s always amusing when Sherlock finds another surveillance device and destroys it. Mycroft has respected his brother’s creativity since they were both small, and when it comes to putting bees in Mycroft’s bonnet—Mycroft knows that’s how Sherlock sees it—his brother truly outdoes himself. Fire and ice, gravity, water... they all become enemies in Sherlock’s hands, and Mycroft just shakes his head and orders another team to 221B Baker Street. (Dr Watson is not nearly so interesting: he has found only one of the ten devices planted in his new office, and all he did was drop it in the dumpster down the street.)

When Mycroft tells people he has his brother’s best interests at heart, he is telling the truth, though many—John Watson included—never quite believe him. They insist on arguing that bugging his brother’s flat is less a gesture of love than a declaration of war and mistrust, no matter the evidence he might present otherwise. Mycroft, though, is deadly earnest in this: Sherlock’s interests, for better or worse, are inextricably linked with the interests of the nation, and Mycroft cannot allow his country to be compromised. It is only a matter of time before Sherlock realises this: Mycroft may know more than his brother does at the moment, but Sherlock is never far behind him.

For now, though, Mycroft keeps replacing the listening devices and tiny cameras as quickly as Sherlock destroys them, and begins paying a woman to tail John Watson—subtly, very subtly, for in this way the good doctor is not nearly so oblivious as he seems. Military training is an excellent base for so very many futures.

He thinks Sherlock needs John in many ways, which is why he allows them to share living space to begin with, and on a basic level Mycroft sleeps better knowing someone with a steady trigger finger is fussing over his brother, forcing him to eat and keeping him entertained just enough that Sherlock won’t slip any further from the rest of the world. 

The manner of the entertainment... that Mycroft is not sure of yet, and for this he watches John Watson.

These reasons he keeps well off the books, known to no one but himself. (And, if he is honest—and Mycroft is always, always honest, unless given a very good reason to fabricate—Sherlock, who likely guessed what Mycroft would do the moment John Watson moved into 221B.) The information is strictly on a need to know basis, and no one needs to know, not yet; his brother’s sexual behaviour does not yet influence or impact his work. Mycroft has no doubt it will begin showing eventually, though, and so he watches John Watson.

He knows that Watson has fired his therapist—good man—but Mycroft also knows the trust issues she noted have not and likely will not disappear, and he knows this may shatter John and Sherlock, or it may be the making of them. He knows the trust Watson has such trouble bestowing is not required for Sherlock’s purposes, that it is in fact perhaps a positive that John may never entirely trust Sherlock—

But there, there Mycroft knows he’s wrong, knows that this falsehood is as useless as the empty comfort it might offer a lesser man than himself, because he has seen it destroyed with his own eyes. John does trust Sherlock, to an extent, trusts him more than anyone in the world, and this is the real problem Mycroft faces. John Watson is so possessed by Sherlock Holmes that he leaves valuable witnesses in danger to go after Sherlock, to protect a man who is, after all, just a man, with a man’s simple limitations. Sherlock is more vulnerable than he knows, and John shares many of his flaws—though, Mycroft is careful to remember, Dr Watson is stronger than anyone gives him credit for.

Mycroft cannot allow harm to befall his brother, but neither can he allow John Watson’s weaknesses to compromise the safety of Britain. And so he watches, and waits, and will be calmly ready to deal out death and punishment in the inevitable end.

It’s the brotherly thing to do, after all.

* 

He likes her because she won’t take shit from anyone, even him, because she’ll jump on his flaws as easily as John does, and he hates her for it. Hates her for drawing John away. Her hair is lank, unattractive, her nose too small, her eyes set too close together. Her name is common. He can’t stand when she sees something before he does. 

He wants to orchestrate something terrible and nasty for her, some way for her to quietly disappear forever, but he knows John would probably figure it out eventually, and then he’d have more than a few solitary evenings to worry about.

And Moriarty. Moriarty would see it in a certain inescapable light, and he isn’t willing to let Moriarty have that. Not yet.

*

You’d think they’d at least have found somewhere a little more private, but Sally supposes it’s to form for Sherlock to be as careless with this as he is with everything else—or as careful, because she can’t help but think this is as orchestrated as everything else Sherlock touches. It isn’t as if they’re doing anything obscene, that’s not what she meant, it’s just...

Look, if a police sergeant with a background in responding to domestic violence calls comes across a pair—of men, women, whoever—and one of them is on their knees before the other, head bowed, an open cut still running blood on their cheek, it’s going to invoke some strong imagery, that’s all she’s saying. She’s not implying anything, there’s nothing to imply, not even when Holmes reaches down to touch Dr Watson’s head almost tenderly, and Christ, seriously, maybe Sally’s only seeing things, because she’s been up seventeen hours straight working this case and handling the salivating press, and this situation could be entirely innocent.

It doesn’t _feel_ innocent. Maybe it’s a stupid thing to say, but there you are. You don’t spend eleven years on the force without developing some sort of instincts.

And yeah, she’ll be the first to say that she’s biased when it comes to Sherlock Holmes. She’s proud to be biased against him. Freak. She doesn’t trust him, and if you really want to know the reasons why, she’ll tell you. She’ll tell you that it’s because he enjoys everything that should be anathema, that should be _abhorrent_ to any decent person. Sally’s seen too many families ripped apart by crime to take any pleasure in her job, except the pleasure that comes in putting bad people away for as long as possible. Holmes revels in the macabre, delights in the misery of others, and she’s never seen such a profound case of schadenfreude before—Holmes takes it far beyond schadenfreude, takes it to a lifestyle, takes the pain into his very being and gets _stronger_ from it, and call her paranoid, but Sally Donovan will never trust him as long as he operates that way. And since she’s certain he needs that to live, that he turns to and subsists on misery like a plant with the sun, she’ll never trust him, and there’s nothing anyone can do to change that.

Yeah, she thought about interrupting. She could have done something, could have wrecked the moment and laid rest to the muttering voices that are forever warning her about Holmes at the back of her mind, but she gets the feeling it would have been received unkindly by both parties, which is the only reason she leaves them alone. Watson doesn’t look like he’s really in trouble—at least, he doesn’t look like he thinks he’s in trouble; as far as she’s concerned anyone that close to Sherlock Holmes has to be in serious trouble. Maybe he gets off on this, just like Holmes gets off on murder victims and broken crockery; she’s not going to judge anyone for their tastes. Maybe their taste in _partner_ , but, you know, to each their own. She’s as accepting as the next person.

No, she wouldn’t say that. John Watson knows what he’s in for; he’s trailed after Holmes for months now, he knows what the man’s like. She’s not going to say it’s a choice she approves of, but it’s not her place to get in the way, even if she thinks this will all end with a long parade of sirens to 221B Baker Street and bodies and a final, terrible—she isn’t going to lie, she isn’t going to leave out relieving—conclusion to the cases of Sherlock Holmes.

She won’t get in their way, but she won’t say she isn’t waiting.

*

Mrs Hudson knows more than anyone gives her credit for—Sherlock Holmes himself included. Had anyone bothered to consult her, she could have told them stories no one would believe. She’s no eavesdropper, but the walls in her building are thin, and she’s up so often in the night from the pain her hip gives her—once an insomniac, always an insomniac, and it always seems the older a person is the less sleep the good Lord gifts them, doesn’t it?—it’s clear enough what happens upstairs.

There are noises, of course, though noises could be explained—heaven knows how many of Sherlock’s experiments have woken her in a fright at an unearthly hour of the night—but she could tell also of the night Sherlock and John come home, late and savage with whatever had been driving them to snap, heedless of her presence as they come crashing soundlessly into the house, fetching up hard against a wall: Sherlock’s face twisted in a snarl and John snarling back, his fingers curling hard into Sherlock’s tailored shirt—and oh sainted aunts, think of the cleaner’s bill!—and she slips quietly back into her own rooms while the buttons snap against the walls, leaves them to themselves. 

Mrs Hudson could tell many stories, but no one asks her, and this sort of information, well, it has to be worked for; it isn’t the sort that one just gives up in casual conversation, is it?

*

Sherlock Holmes is careful, so careful, we’ve known that for years. We have known that since we first began watching him, when we were still only the inkling of a thought in anyone’s mind. Sherlock Holmes has never been the sort of man one can take by surprise, not even when he was a boy, solemn and prone to fits of temper.

Sherlock is callous, cold. He uses people and doesn’t care about the consequences—admirable of him—and that includes John Watson. Of course Sherlock uses John. He wields Watson in the way some men might pick up a shield: a way of deflecting curiosity, a barometer to control his behaviour more or less within certain acceptable social mores, a way to affirm his own ego. He uses John’s body, takes pleasure in it, though he doesn’t think anyone but the two of them is aware of that particular facet of their relationship yet. Short-sighted of him, really, but he makes up for it in the power of his sheer indifference. He could care less if the world knew what the two of them were up to—though John would care, oh yes, John would care enormously—and so Sherlock is happy enough keeping it private, for now.

We approve of all of this, all of these precautions. Holmes wouldn’t be much of an opponent if he were easy to get to. We’ve enjoyed the chase immensely.

But we have found a weakness, at last. Sherlock may never truly care for John, not in the way the movies would have us all believe is right and true, but he feels... _proprietary_. 

John is the way in. John is the breaking point, for as Sherlock possesses him, he becomes possessive in turn. He is a moral man, an upright man, and he will not stand for Sherlock to come to harm if he believes he can prevent it.

He cannot prevent it, of course. An unfortunate failing of his, to believe that he can change things which were and are unchangeable, and one we will not hesitate to exploit. And once we have John—as proven, as wasted opportunity has proven time and time again—Sherlock will follow.

It is only a matter of time.

*


End file.
